China's Retiring Migrant Workers Find They Have No Place to Call Home

(Beijing) – A generation of Chinese people from rural areas who moved to the big cities to find work is reaching retirement age, but many are finding they have been left outside the country's urban pension system despite extensive reforms in recent years.

Zhang Shumin and her husband, Liu Yuchen, spent over 20 years working as sanitation workers in Beijing and live in a tiny room next to a public restroom they clean. The natives of the northern province of Hebei are nearing retirement, but have learned their employer never properly paid their pensions.